Does anyone just go for a walk any more? I only ask because the last time I was stomping through the New Forest, I noticed lots of people taking notes, speaking into tape recorders or rather pointedly starting up conversations with random passers-by.

And I thought: you’re not just walking in the New Forest. You’re all writing books about walking in the New Forest.

Graham Hoyland may have been one of these people, though his book is more ambitious than that and, it turns out, much more fun to read.

Graham Hoyland and his girlfriend Gina wander along canal towpaths, wade through fields of bluebells, hear birdsong, accidentally kneel in dog poo, gaze up at the night sky and occasionally walk with old friends

The English spring, he discovered, appears in the southern counties in late March and then moves north, travelling at much the same speed as a walking man.

So he decided he would be that walking man. With his girlfriend Gina he set out from the South Coast, sticking to ancient footpaths where possible, and walked north to Gretna Green on the Scottish border.

Along the way he marked each mile by planting an acorn in a hedgerow, intending to draw a line of oak trees stretching across the countryside.

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In his own words, Walking Through Spring is ‘a book in the English pastoral tradition’.

Richard Jefferies, Edward Thomas and the current doyen of poetic nature writing, Robert Macfarlane, are his touchstones.

He and Gina wander along canal towpaths, wade through fields of bluebells, hear birdsong, accidentally kneel in dog poo, gaze up at the night sky, occasionally walk with old friends and avoid motorways and towns wherever possible.

The outer journey inspires a parallel inner journey. They think and talk about things that set off other trains of thought, which lead to other conversations, some of them with rural ‘characters’ they bump into almost too conveniently.

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Water in gallons that an oak tree needs every day

Like the walk, the book is more about travelling than arriving. It’s best read slowly, possibly even at walking pace.

So - and this is by way of a taster - as they walk the Cotswold Way, Hoyland contemplates the distinct golden-brown of Cotswold stone.

J. B. Priestley was fascinated by the colour. ‘Even when the sun is obscured and the light is cold, these walls are still faintly warm and luminous, as if they knew the trick of keeping the lost sunlight of centuries glimmering about them.’

To Hoyland they look like crust on a Stilton cheese. ‘I wish I could just walk up to one of these houses, cut a slab off and eat it.’

On that day, April 13, they wander through a wood and see their first big display of bluebells. They wonder about the myth that in Roman times England was just one great wildwood. ‘This whole island is one horrible forest,’ Julius Caesar is supposed to have said.

A squirrel could have travelled from shore to shore without touching the ground.

Except that this isn’t true. By the time Caesar arrived, more than half the wildwood had been cut down. By the time of the Domesday Book, only 15 per cent of it was left. There’s only 2 per cent now.

Like the walk, the book is more about travelling than arriving. It’s best read slowly, possibly even at walking pace

They see a pair of magpies. The collective noun for magpies is a ‘tidings’. Magpies have been seen grieving for their dead, laying wreaths of grass. They are among the most intelligent of birds.

‘Contrary to folk wisdom, magpies are not attracted to shiny things, but they can recognise themselves in a mirror.’

In one experiment, coloured marks were made on the necks of magpies and they were observed looking in the mirror and trying to scratch off the mark.

Hoyland and Gina stay the night with a mountaineering friend, who is excited because he has recently spotted Yeti tracks on Bhutan’s highest mountain.

‘We gaze at his images of indisputably bipedal tracks in the snow.’ Explorers use smartphones, too, of course.

If this all seems a little disconnected, that’s because it is, but not in a bad way. As you read, though, certain themes become apparent. Hoyland and Gina not only feel healthier for their walk, they feel saner.

The villainy of the agrichemical concerns that some farms have become is contrasted with the heroism of volunteers who sustain the few wild places that remain. For nature, Hoyland says, is not just under threat, it’s under siege.

This richly enjoyable book will entertain you on one page, enrage you on the next and make you get out your walking boots on the third. I think it’s the most effective advertisement for the countryside I’ve ever encountered.